Brussels /1 & 2 February 2014

Friday Beer Event

While coming over to Brussels to attend FOSDEM, don’t miss this great
opportunity to taste some of the finest
beer in Belgium
(and hence in the world).

When?

Friday, 31 January 2014
from 18:00(-ish) onwards, but feel free to join the party at any time of the
evening.
We will be there until the bar closes (well after midnight).

Beer, Beer and some more Beer

This year’s beer event will again take place at the
Delirium Café,
in a beautiful alley near the
Grand Place
in Brussels.
In addition to the
enormous variety in
beers,
the location also has enough room to accommodate the vast crowd of geeks we
tend to be.

There are 25 different draught beers available.
In addition to these, there is a cellar full of regular and specialty bottled
beer.
The beer menu on the
bar’s website, while always out of date, is a good indication of the wide
selection available.

Beer Distribution Algorithm v3.2 (stable)

After about ten years of incremental improvements to our notorious Beer
Distribution Algorithm, we appear to have reached a stable version with the
algorithm used: v3.2.
We have no changes to the algorithm to announce this year, at least up to
now—if we change our mind, we will let you know you in time.

Security measures / access control

We have reserved the ground floor of the bar as a private party for FOSDEM.
The Delirium Café has offered us an extra room so we will be able to
move around a bit easier.
Delirium Security will help us keep this area FOSDEM-only.
If you meet a guard at the entrance to the bar, make it clear to him that you
are there for the FOSDEM party.
Wearing appropriately geeky attire tends to do the trick, as does mentioning
the name FOSDEM.

Beer Tokens

Tokens are €3 each.
One token, one beer.
For the sake of simplicity, “soda” (cola, lemonade, etc) is beer too—at
least as far as tokens are concerned.
Tokens may be bought individually, but FOSDEM staff prefers to deal with paper
money rather than metal money.
It’s lighter and easier to sort.

When you arrive at the bar, find a member of FOSDEM staff (look for flashy
yellow and orange tshirts).
In exchange for money, you will receive “beer tokens”.

Quality of Service

To keep latencies low and throughput high, we need everyone’s help.
The easiest way to keep things going smoothly is for everyone to implement a
transmit and receive window.
Do not order individual beers—order beers for people around you too!
Trays will be made available to efficiently move more than one beer from the
bar to where they are needed.
Similarly, when ordering beer, please take a moment to collect any empty
glasses around you on a tray and send them back to be bar with whoever is
ordering beer.

The Delirium Café staff is working hard to make our evening as pleasant
as possible, but we’re legion.

Laws of Physics

Sadly, even the FOSDEM Beer Event is subject to the fundamental laws of
physics.
We were unable to get an exception for the principle that no two solid objects
can occupy the same space at the same time.
If you find the bar getting too crowded, it might help to go for dinner and
come back later.
The bar will be open until 06:00 (that’s 6am to intercontinental geeks).
While FOSDEM staff will stop distributing tokens sometime after midnight (we
have a conference to set up early in the morning), the tokens will be valid
all night and after tokens run out, beer can be exchanged directly for cash
too (same price).

A note of caution

Unlike some other beers, Belgian beer is not just coloured water.
Some beers contain significant quantities of alcohol and will give
you a pounding hangover (as a side note, consuming lots of (pure) water helps
preventing that).
FOSDEM staff is not responsible for any hallucinations you may experience as a
result of this event. :-)

Be there!

A lot of work has gone into making this beer event the best ever.
We’ve taken into account the suggestions from previous years and are confident
that this edition will be a blast.
Bring your friends and join us for a great evening out as well as a great
opportunity to socialise with fellow contributors from all around the world.

Contact and location

If you manage to get lost somehow, despite this handy little map, call Jochen.
He might not be able to help you find the way, but he should be able to find
someone who can! :-)